# Cel Shading (セルシェーディング)

> Cel shading quantizes continuous 3D lighting into a few flat bands and may add contours, retaining spatial movement while making the surface read like animation cels or printed illustration.

- IndexStyle No.587 — https://indexstyle.org/styles/cel-shading
- Kind: Technique · Family: Digital Image Techniques · Era: 1990s–
- Mood: Play, Technique, Exhilaration
- What this family collects: Each brings the smallest units of an image, or the machinery of its compression, to the surface, so coarseness and breakdown count as method instead of defect.

## Defining characteristics

- Shadow split into two or three flat values
- Strong outer and crease contours
- Uniform color planes with restrained reflections
- Three-dimensional motion beneath a drawn surface

## Best used for

- Giving 3D games and animation a readable drawn surface
- Clarifying complex forms in diagrams and interactive exhibits

## Composition recipe

- Typography & lettering: Use headlines as strong as the contours and move small copy onto a flat field.
- Layout & structure: Choose an angle where silhouette and light-dark plane division remain clear.
- Material & texture: Quantize diffuse light to two to four bands, suppress reflection and draw only necessary silhouette and crease lines.

## Colour

Read off the reference works below, so a direction rather than a fixed palette.

- Ground: #F2D7A7
- The colour it is remembered by: #E65D4F
- Text and outlines: #25213A

## What to avoid

An outline around ordinary 3D shading is not cel shading. The lighting itself must become discrete planes.

## Application checklist

Work through this before calling a piece an application of this style.

- [ ] Visible in the piece: Shadow split into two or three flat values
- [ ] Visible in the piece: Strong outer and crease contours
- [ ] Visible in the piece: Uniform color planes with restrained reflections
- [ ] Visible in the piece: Three-dimensional motion beneath a drawn surface
- [ ] The layout follows: Choose an angle where silhouette and light-dark plane division remain clear.
- [ ] The lettering follows: Use headlines as strong as the contours and move small copy onto a flat field.
- [ ] The material and surface follow: Quantize diffuse light to two to four bands, suppress reflection and draw only necessary silhouette and crease lines.
- [ ] The colour relation holds: #F2D7A7 as ground, #E65D4F carrying the style, #25213A for text and outlines
- [ ] At least one reference work below has been studied directly
- [ ] The caution above ("What to avoid") has been addressed

## Related styles

- **Limited Animation (リミテッド・アニメーション)** — Deliberately reduces the number of drawings, using held frames, repeats and partial movement as style. UPA established it as an aesthetic; television and Japanese commercial animation grew it into grammars of their own. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/limited-animation
- **Low Poly (ローポリ)** — Leaves the few polygons and hard facet changes visible, using simplicity of form as the expression. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/low-poly

## Compose it with something else

The dictionary can put this entry in a structural role and another in an accent role, and report where the two fight: https://indexstyle.org/compose?ids=cel-shading+limited-animation

## Further study

- Non-photorealistic rendering
- Quantized diffuse lighting
- Silhouette and crease lines

## Reference works

- Eurographics Digital Library — A Survey of Digital Cel-Shading — https://diglib.eg.org/items/28867f5a-edfd-48ac-a8ae-a8d46a9fd4d3/full

## AI interpretation

An AI-generated interpretation image exists for browsing convenience only — it is not a reference work: https://indexstyle.org/ai/cel-shading.jpg

## Source of record

- Eurographics Digital Library — A Survey of Digital Cel-Shading — https://diglib.eg.org/items/28867f5a-edfd-48ac-a8ae-a8d46a9fd4d3/full

## Machine surfaces

- JSON: https://indexstyle.org/api/styles/cel-shading
- Image-generation prompt (legally clean): https://indexstyle.org/styles/cel-shading/prompt.txt
- MCP: https://indexstyle.org/mcp (tools: search_styles, get_style, compare_styles, compose_styles, find_related_styles; prompts: image-prompt, apply-style)